


Folie a deux

by ectoBisexual



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Falling In Love, Ficlet, Sexual Content, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-13
Updated: 2013-09-13
Packaged: 2017-12-26 11:58:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/965667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ectoBisexual/pseuds/ectoBisexual
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Folie a deux (noun);<br/>A madness shared by two</p>
            </blockquote>





	Folie a deux

Kanaya Maryam walks alone at night so that she will not have to think about being forgotten. She brushes her hair twice a day and spends at least half an hour choosing her outfit. She thinks that smoking is a filthy habit, and she does not have a tendency to fall in love with snarky girls with bright smiles. Her cigarette burns cherry red and licks a stream of ashy grey into the black pallet of white diamonds that lies ahead of her, and she closes her eyes the whole drag, savoring the way the smoke fills up her lungs, burns on the inside of her and then slowly, slowly, peppers its firey kisses all along the inside of her throat and out through the part in her lips, tangling in a dangerous carpet with the precise billow coming from the end of the cigarette. She does not run a hand through the mess of dark hair she knows she will find above two jade-green eyes ringed smoky black, and she does not glance at the ounce of reflection in the store window cast by dim streetlight as she passes, because she knows she will not like what she sees. She left the party early. If she had have stayed any longer, they would have stopped talking to her, and it would have then become very apparent that she is irreconcilably alone.

Kanaya feels as if she should lay blame on Vriska for all of this, but she doesn’t. She’s always been timid and horrible to talk to in bed, whereas Vriska is beautiful and snarky and brilliant and also has her life completely put together. Kanaya still lives with her parents, this bright girl with a reserved smile who everyone says has this whole big future waiting for her, even though it’s been five years since she left school and she still can’t pay her half of the rent at home. She tells herself that this is okay, she is only 23, everything will come together eventually. She tells herself this, but sometimes at 2am she walks the short, cold five minutes to Vriska’s upscale edge-of-the-city apartment and rides the elevator up to see her while pointedly not making eye contact with her reflection in the vague, dirty mirrored walls. She tells herself this, and yet she still cries every time Vriska fucks her.

She should have known that Vriska would move on eventually. Hell, she expected this from the first moment; there is nothing special about her, nothing outstanding, and while Vriska has her snark and wit and bitchiness to fall back on personality-wise, the best Kanaya has going for herself is the fact that she can out-vocabulary the best of people and though she’s not the best, she likes to think she’s fair at fashion design. These, however, are not basis for an interesting personality. She can’t exactly meet a girl and woo her with the fact that she used to babysit and she reads a lot of books.

So she’s 23 and she’s mad and broken and her hair is messy as she walks along the street adjacent to the one that leads to Vriska’s apartment, because that’s just where she came from. She figures, if she had have stuck around, anyway, she would probably have had to watch the girl of her dreams make out with that new boy of hers, and even the thought of sticking around for such a thing makes Kanaya’s stomach churn sickly. She’s enjoying the cool night air and the burn of smoke in her lungs when she first hears the voice, girlish and gravelly and heavily sarcastic lilting from the shadows of an outstretched mini-mall, “Smoking is very bad for you, you’re going to get lung cancer that way.”

This is the day that she meets Rose Lalonde, who has messy blonde hair and bags under her eyes and skinned knees. She’s smoking when she steps into the light, but snuffs her cigarette for the better part of the joke, and then they introduce themselves and Rose asks if Kanaya would like to come back to her apartment.

Here, Kanaya remembers thinking, is a girl who is so positively interesting and so broken at the same time, like that’s even possible; Rose claims to be a recovering alcoholic within their first five minutes of walking together (but there are empty bottles of wine littering the entrance to her home, which she politely nudges out of the way with the exposed, chipping black polished toenail where her stockings have torn at the end. Rose sleeps on a mattress on the floor and smokes clove cigarettes and drinks a kind of cheap red wine with which Kanaya is quickly enamored; it reminds her of her mother, though that is a dreadful thought to be having when you’re in the company of a lady whom you really wouldn’t mind seeing naked, and it reminds her of her first time drinking with a group of people. Vriska was among that group, and for the first time all night, she accidentally does not think about her. She drinks the stuff straight from the bottle and when they’re both drunk enough to be lasting on a slight buzz and a heady giggle, Rose takes Kanaya out onto her balcony and they talk in hushed voices about how their lives are falling apart. Rose’s eyes are this strange colour, this dark blue that’s so blue it’s almost purple; kind of like Vriska’s, but when Rose snarks, her eyes sparkle, whereas Vriska’s, Kanaya realises for the first time, go dull and flat and lifeless, like she is bored of the bitter taste of the dry humour she spits out.

When they kiss for the first time Rose tastes of the cigarettes she’s been smoking; which is to say, horrible, but Kanaya drinks it in with this strange fondness, this sudden zeal for the woman’s flavour of clove and wine and cheap black lipstick. Kanaya tells her this in a whisper, eyes too wide and too honest suddenly; Rose’s own eyes darken and she sticks her hand into Kanaya’s panties and fucks her with two fingers until her wrist cramps and Kanaya is whimpering childishly into Rose’s freesia-smelling hair. They make love out on the balcony under the stars, Rose’s hands on Kanaya’s breasts and Kanaya’s own tangled somewhere deep in the mess of blonde that surrounds this face she can’t stop looking at; this O face Rose does when she comes, the way she clenches her teeth and spits out Kanaya’s name like it’s a swear, the way she bites down on Kanaya’s neck like it’s the last time she’ll ever use her teeth.

In the morning, Rose makes tinned spaghetti over her gas stove for breakfast, and Kanaya sits in one of Rose’s huge sweaters she has lying around and underwear and only one sock and she decides she’s in love, though the realisation is neither humming nor bitter, simply a fact she accepts with a thoughtful noise. Rose asks, “What?”, and Kanaya says, “Oh, nothing. It’s just that I think I’m quite in love with you.”

Kanaya has always walked alone at night to escape the thought of being forgotten. When she tells Rose this, days later when they’re tangled in freshly washed sheets and Rose finally says I Love You back, Rose gets all quiet and solemn and looks like she has something to say right up until the moment Kanaya realises she really means nothing, so instead they kiss under dim lamplight and trace patterns on each other’s skin.

And then Kanaya says, “I really don’t have my life put together at all, you know,” like it’s the most obvious statement in the world. Rose smiles.

“Good. I’ve always been good at fixing things. Where shall I start?”

**Author's Note:**

> this is one of my (unedited) 5am fics  
> just for  
> like  
> reference
> 
> yeah.


End file.
